Shark Bytes

This show never jumped, and I wish they'd show this and other really classic sitcoms on TV Land and Nick at Nite instead of endless episodes of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". My favorite episode of "Hazel": the one where "Missy" and her snobby society friends won't let Hazel sing in their children's hospital benefit-then Hazel is shown actually singing (and, I might add, much better than the society ladies!)to the "beneficiaries".Naturally, Missy walks in on this very touching moment and is all contrite as a result.

Hazel represented one of the first shows where a fat, unappealing husband had a smoking hot wife (today, that's the norm). Of course, I think "Mr. B" was a lawyer or some such thing--so it makes sense that he had the bucks to look good to a hottie. But how do you explain Jim Belushi???????

What a crappy show! Why wasn't this nosy, interfering, obnoxious maid fired? Didn't Mr. B. have a pair? Or was he used to letting the help run his home?

Missy was NOT just sitting on her %$$ all day! Remember her interior decorating business? And Hazel was like Missy's mom--she had worked with Missy her whole life, so it was like having a member of the family live there.

This show was no more entertaining than pulling up a chair in your neighbors' living-room and watching them live their lives.

Why did the Baxter's need a maid, in the first place...I mean, how lazy was Mrs. B that she just wanted to sit on her ass all day while some borderline illiterate did the household chores?

Kind of a mediocre show. This show wouldn't have lasted long w/o the great Shirley Booth in the title role. It's a shame that she's best known for this role, as she delivered one of the great performances in motion picture history in Come Back, Little Sheba. She was also a tremendous stage actress winning multiple Tony awards.

Hazel was one of those disposable shows that made the scene and got deep-sixed like so many back then. Not great, not horrible... just one of them junkers fobbed off on us Americans as "good wholesome television". Hazel had some funny moments... it helped if you were high on good pot, though.
If George tapped Missy more often, then he wouldn't have been so crabby!
Jumped the Shark? I don't know if shows like Hazel ever JTS... they never get good enough to peak in top form.
Hazel herself was an okay busybody. Too bad she didn't win the Irish Sweepstakes, then she could have had the Baxter's kissing her azz for a change.

The show jumped when Hazel became a meddling pain in the ass. So I guess that's day one.

What insufferable,dated crap.It could have been worse only if Hazel were black and kept running from ghosts and sleeping on the job cleaning up after "The Plastic Family."

I always wondered why "Missy" needed Hazel; although she was supposed to be an interior decorator, the most you ever saw her do was leave the house with a swatch of cloth and a briefcase. By the way, Whitney Blake was 36 when the Hazel series began and her agent, Allan Mannings (whom she later married) instructed her children (Meredith Baxter Birney is her daughter) to address her as their sister rather than their mother to make her appear younger. Whitney Blake and Mannings went on to create and develop One Day At A Time.

It was Burt Lancaster in "Come Back Little Sheba"
Whitney Blake was the hottest woman on TV in the sixties, (especially in a hat)

"Hazel"jumped bigtime when the show moved from NBC ro CBS,and she went to work for lawyer George Baxter's(Mr.B's)real estate agent brother Steve.Except for a couple of good CBS episodes,most of the CBS episodes were subpar,and somewhat irritating.Also,the sort-of-warm relationship that Hazel had with Mr.B's family,was not there at all when she went to work for Mr.B's brother.(Case in point:In every other CBS episode,Steve Baxter threatened to fire her).Besides that,the CBS episodes were far less memorable than the NBC shows.

Give Hazel a break!! It's one of those "You had to be there" for baby boomers. Sport and I are about the same age in real life and "Hazel" was no more corny than other sitcoms of that era. Shirley Booth was an awesome actress. People forget she was in her mid-60s during this show and had the energy of someone half that. I agree Whitney Blake was a fox and Don Defore was even more annoying as Mr B. than he was on "Ozzie and Harriet" or any of his sidekick roles in movies. Besides Shirley Booth, the main reason for watching was Smiley the dog. Was that the same dog that played Tramp on "My Three Sons?"

Hazel was a good clean wholesome sitcom of the 60's. Those of us who were developing our character during those years could escape through harmless entertainment. Let's not be too hard on the Thanksgiving episode because it was 'then' not 'now'. The thing I liked about it was a family with life that held few complications. It sometimes is nice to not have to worry all of the time. Don Defore was an likeable charater in shows that he did. When the cast changed, those of us who were attached to the original family couldn't feel the same. Much as a sequel is frequently less than the original. Thank you for giving us some fond memories of life in simpler times.

The show Hazel jumped day one. I agree with the posters who point out that Shirley Booth really was a talented woman. It's just that the show is painful to watch. Hazel would flip out over issues of which she were only partially informed because she never bothered to check on the information she had gotten by standing outside the room and hearing only part of the conversations. If Hazel toned it down a little and George warmed it up a little, it might have been tolerable. Also, the writers should have been encouraged to drink heavily in the morning. **concerning the posts here about stuffing a bird with gloves: there's nothing wrong with wearing plastic gloves while stuffing a turkey. In fact, these days, boxes of little plastic gloves are available for helping to make cooking safer. I wouldn't use plastic gloves myself for stuffing a turkey, but that's only because I'm not low enough to shove things into a dead bird's body. I did appreciate the idea above about using plastic gloves to go to the bathroom. If you think about it, it makes sense. Thank you for making my life better. The real point that might have been made about using the plastic gloves to stuff a bird is that the show is from the 1960's. This was a primitive time in human history. Telephones had to be dialed manually (often by the maid that you were paying because it was such an arduous task). I read in a history book that Firefighters used gasoline to put out fires because it was cheaper than water, and, no one had as yet determined that gasoline was flammable. Parents used to spray DDT on their children's faces to keep insects away from them. Oh, how I wish I lived back then. There are many children I would have liked to spray with DDT.